Quote of the day

"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end burn human beings." - Heinrich Heine (1820)

Heine's works were among those burned by the Nazis in 1933.

via Hitler's Philosophers by Yvonne Sherratt

Excerpt of the day

From Half a Crown by Jo Walton

"As soon as she's told them whatever it is they think she's holding out on, she'll be back with you ... She'll tell them soon. You've approved the [interrogation] methods at Finsbury yourself."

Carmichael wanted to say that he hadn't approved them for Elvira, for an innocent girl, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth. He had approved them, and if he had approved them he had approved them for her, for anyone, for everyone.

Quote of the day

"[A]ny man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." - John Donne, Meditation XVII

Kim Davis and moral false equivalence

"This is like saying that Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus and the bus driver refusing to let black people on the bus would be morally equivalent, which is clearly false." - Ed Brayton, on those claiming Kim Davis is a hero of conscience